Improving the Students' Speaking Skill Through the use of English Songs. A Case Study of First Year Students at the Department of English. University of Batna

Abstract

Acquiring an acceptable amount of vocabulary items so as to speak comfortably and fluently English is one of the needs of the students at the department of English, university of Batna. Actual practices in classrooms, however, reflect a continuing undermining of how to acquire vocabulary and how to memorize it for any future speaking situation. The present topic of research is an attempt to examine the role that English songs, as the alternative teaching strategy to the Oral Expression course, might have on improving students' achievement in the speaking skill. The results obtained have shown that applying songs as a teaching strategy revealed to be very successful. The students who were taught, Oral Expression, using songs achieved better progress than the students who were taught in the traditional way. The experimental results led us assert the significance of the Oral Expression course in the language classroom and of the positive impact that songs have on students' accomplishment in the speaking skill. Songs are very significant tools to develop the students' linguistic oral proficiency. They offer a relaxing atmosphere, enhance both listening and speaking activities and develop the students' linguistic knowledge of vocabulary, pronunciation and grammar as well.